Outbreaks of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne illness, seem to be driven by infections centered around the home, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Institute Pasteur in Paris and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh.
Researchers investigated a 2012 chikungunya outbreak in a small village in Bangladesh, visiting every household and interviewing 1,933 individuals. A total of 364 people reported having chikungunya symptoms between May 29 and Dec. 1, 2012.
Despite the fact that chikungunya is only transmitted via mosquitoes, not through close contact with infected people, researchers found more than a quarter of cases were spread in the same household, and half of the infections were in households less than 200 meters away.
“It appears that mosquitoes are very lazy,” said Henrik Salje, PhD, the study's leader. “They bite someone in a household and get infected with a virus and then hang around to bite someone else in the same home or nearby.”
This information could help the fight against Zika, another mosquito-borne illness. It offers a new path to investigate and respond to outbreaks caused by the Aedes mosquito species.